Think about all the regrets and bad things that have happened to you, that you don't know about – the time you dropped money or missed out on a life changing opportunity or mistakes you have made that never got your attention. You probably don't or won't because you don't feel much for things that you don't know that happened to you. So it is possible to feel no emotion about negative things. You have the power to hold no opinion about things, you just need to cultivate it. Regret is much like fear, you have come to your fate by dreading your fate.

When I wrote "I want to accommodate" I meant "create conditions where they would be productive and effective" -- it wasn't really about command-and-control.

Forcing geniuses to learn to operate when the less-gifted are in positions of power is good

Again, sure, but no one is suggesting building some sort of a refuge for the gifted (Galt's Gulch?) where they could be spared the ravages of the dumb normie society. The are forced to learn in any case.

The whole "show up neatly groomed and dressed" thing is teaching kids to emit particular social signals, it's just that these signals are more suited (heh) for some situations (e.g. you're applying for a sales clerk position at Macy's) and less suited for others. If you are looking to hire a programmer and the candidate shows up in a fancy business suit (while showing all signs of being comfortable in it) with a carefully attended-to hairdo, I don't think those signals would be well-received.

I don't think that the "show up neatly groomed and dressed" thing is teaching kids to emit particular social signals that is less suitable to a programmer coming to an interview. Both scenarios are about conforming to social norms and for students that happens to be literally neatly groomed/dressed, which for the programmer means no business suit. It's just more useful to use the phrase neatly groomed/dressed than socially appropriate because for most things socially appropriate is neatly groomed/dressed.

Being socially appropriate is not overrated conditional on IQ – you have already established that the programmer (presumably your high IQ example) is aware of the dangers of coming in like a weirdo in a business suit to an interview. Why wouldn't the younger version of this person also want to not look like a weirdo to their peers while in school?

I think there was a distinction made between planned C-sections and unplanned C-sections (medical emergencies), so that they were able differentiate outcomes following emergencies like a breech baby vs a completely planned C-section. And I think it showed that show C-sections overall were more risky than vaginal birth and long term health was better for vaginal births.

I haven't done any google fu on this topic, other than reading a few passages in a book.

Ideally 100% of those that medically need C-sections will get it, and those that don't wont.

I think there was a study that was cited in the book about the reduced C-sections rates, but of course the devil is in the details like you say, best to do your own research. I have personally updated my beliefs in favor being more resilient to time pressures of labor and that use of a doula isn't just a waste of money as I previously had thought.

I am reading Expecting Better, a book about evidence based pregnancy and in it, there are passages about the high rates of C-sections and why it might be. The conclusion was that one medical intervention, whether by drugs or over-monitoring, usually leads to another and another and you end up with a C-section. Non C-section births have better outcomes. So you want to avoid it if you can. The book also mentions that the use of a doula can reduce rates of C-sections to less than 10% from modern U.S. rates of 30%. That is very impressive. Why and how?

I interviewed a professional doula and just asked quite plainly how does her service provide such a dramatic decrease in C-sections. Her personal experience if she is to be believed, is in line with the 10% figure. Her answer is that by being an advocate for the mother and delaying any unnecessary medical intervention in the delivery room, and by providing a calm and coping environment for the mother, she is able to have better outcomes. This means not bringing the mother to the hospital too early.

The way she described it was that the delivery room is a high stress situation where there are doctors and nurses who are supposed to be doing something, and when nothing is happening, they tend to make things happen, when the right thing to do is just wait. Doulas often go to your home before you are in active labor and bring you to the hospital no earlier than you have too. This is the key, by going to the hospital too early you are increasing your chances of having some medical intervention.

So the take away is that there is good evidence that doulas are effective and do so by:

timing the right time to go to the hospital

preparing a mother to be calm and mentally strong

advocating for a mother in the delivery room for more time, before intervention

But how many? It seems more likely that most terrorist have shitty lives and got exposed to a dangerous and bad meme. The alternative would be that there is a certain genetic demographic that is predisposed to committing terrorism, sounds far fetched. If Christians during the crusades had modern technology 1000 years ago, we would probably have seen the kinds of solo terrorism we see today. It was really hard to be a lone fanatic trying to kill 10s of people back then with a blade.

I have sometimes mused that accumulating political power (or generally being able to socially engineer) is the closest to magic that we have in the real world. It's the force multiplier that magic is used for in fiction by a single protagonist. Most people who want magic also do not follow political careers. Of course, this is only a musing because there are lots of differences. No matter how much power you accumulate you are still beholden to someone or something, so if independence is a big part of your magical power fantasy then it won't help.

Tangentially related, I'm surprised that students misjudge how high the cost of being late is to the cost of arriving early. I have a suspicion that people who insist on being exactly one minute early and no more are made up of two groups, the very efficient and the best procrastinators that are often late and when on time they get to pat themselves on the back for being efficient.

Getting to class early just to sit in the front row is the easiest way to boost your grade for most classes, IMO as an armchair psychologist.

Actually, you don't even need to tax corporate profits in this scenario. Just tax when actual people get money - company makes more profit, eventually it needs to distribute that profit to shareholders (dividends) or employees (higher wages for the non-displaced). Tax at that point, not along the way.

I dunno, it's hard enough trying to determine if and where profit was made, in order to tax it. If we didn't tax profits and only distributions then there would be no taxes to collect. Companies and individuals would all claim that any profit are being retained for future investment or for hoarding and not actually distributed to owners. That is why we tax non distributed retained earning.